


take a walk through the wreckage

by besselfcn



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Backstory, Flashbacks, M/M, POV Second Person, Suicide Attempt, The Circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: When did you know?
Relationships: Anders/Hawke (Dragon Age), Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 12
Kudos: 34





	take a walk through the wreckage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cptsdstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdstars/gifts).



> a gift for a girl

Pressed into a single cot, wrapped around each other for warmth and sharing the same pocket of breath trapped between you, Hawke asks, _how did you know?_

You laugh, press your lips to Hawke’s stubble. _That I liked to fuck men?_

An easy question to answer; it’s always been there, in the back of your mind, since you were small and brought up around other boys, gangly and irritable and wild.

But Hawke makes a noise of protest in the back of his throat. _No_ , he says. _That you wanted to be a healer._

You exhale all at once, right up against Hawke’s throat. 

\---

When did you know? 

When you were thirteen, a girl came back to the apprentice dormitories sniffling and holding her wrist at an awful sort of angle and woke half the cots up by kicking over a box with all of her might.

You opened your eyes and watched, but you didn’t get out of bed; you didn’t see the point. It was warm under the covers and cold in the room, and there was nothing you could do for the girl anyway besides empty and useless platitudes.

Still, a crowd formed around her that you peered through to watch.

 _Templars_ , she’d said, with a sharpened knife-edge to her voice. _Nothing too nasty. Caught me trying to sneak out the gardens. Tried to cast a glyph on them so they’d leave me be and broke my fuckin’ wrist_.

An older apprentice girl, nearing her Harrowing, knelt down in front of her and shook her head. 

_You’ve got to stop doing that_ , she scolded. She took the girl’s hand and breathed, in heavy through the nose and out through the mouth, and a warmth pulsed from her that washed across the frigid stone floors. 

The girl in the center of the circle flexed her wrist. 

_Thanks_ , she muttered. _I’m going to bed_. 

The next day, you practiced and practiced and practiced til your fingers ached trying to recreate that warmth, but all you ever got was flame.

\---

When did you know?

The first time you watched Hawke collapse in battle. His knees buckled underneath him, a blade buried to the hilt in his side, and he gasped, one hand planted in the dirt like it could keep him up even as he swayed and shook, and then crumpled. 

You were all blind fury and thoughtless anger. No justice; no vengeance. Fear. Need. 

You don’t remember Varric killing the man who stabbed him, though you do remember the crossbow bolt through his neck afterwards. You remember only sprinting towards Hawke, letting a spell build in your fingertips as you ran, until you could lean over and pry the knife out while pouring the spell in, blocking out the sounds of Hawke’s shuddering breaths so you could focus, focus, focus. 

The spell ended, and you waited. You thought, on a loop, _not like this. Not again._

Hawke opened his eyes. 

_Neat trick you got there_ , he rasped, and you laughed like you’d gone mad, and maybe you had.

\---

When did you know?

The Circle is a prison. Physical; mental; emotional; it wants to kill you; it wants to kill you; it wants to kill you. You have escaped five times. Four times? Five times, if you count the time you broke away at dead sprint on market day, but that wasn’t really to escape, not like the others, that was just to see what they’d do, if they’d hit you in front of everyone else, and they would, so you learned. It wants to kill you. You tried swimming that one time. What a magnificent fuck-you that would have been, if you could have just swam to shore, if they’d had to just watch you from the docks and let you go and where would you have gone, you don’t know, you didn’t know then and don’t know now. You know it wants to kill you. It wants to kill you. Your hands burn with magic. Your head is all fire. White-hot, purple-hot, uncontrollable. Burn the world down fire. Rip your hair out fire.

IT WANTS TO KILL YOU.

IT WANTS TO KILL YOU.

IT WANTS, IT WANTS, IT WANTS.

You wake up. 

Arms crossed over your chest. Someone behind you and someone in front. Smells like terrible cologne, the kind with cinnamon laced in it. That and the bitter taste of elfroot on your tongue.

 _He’s waking up,_ the person in front of you says. A boy from your dormitory. He’s top of his class. He doesn’t like you much.

 _Anders,_ Karl gasps. It’s Karl, against you. Holding you up. Holding your wrists to your chest.

You pull them away from you and look down. Nasty, jagged wounds, barely stitched up by a half-wrought healing spell. Oh, there’s blood. On the floor. On your robes. Karl’s. The other boy’s.

 _Oh,_ you say, as you start to understand. _I didn’t mean to do that._

The boy laughs, the way you laugh when you are so tired you cannot do anything else. Karl cries, and rocks you back and forth, and says _thank you, thank you, oh, fuck, thank you._

Your chest, your head, your wrists ache with the knowledge that this boy has made him grateful and you have made him cry. 

\---

When did you know?

A little girl came to your clinic a week after it opened and told you her cat was having babies and could you please come look. You started to say you aren’t that kind of healer, that there are real people who really need your help, but she looked nearly as desperate as the woman who came to you for a cough that was wracking her son’s body, so you followed her back to the hovel where she stays.

You stayed the night, watching the mother cat howl and moan while the little girl’s mother brought you a bitter tea that was mostly water, and in the morning there were four new kittens pattering around the dusty hardwood floor, one of them that would have choked on its own undergrown lungs if it weren't gently coaxed to health by your hands. 

_Thank you_ , the mother told you. _Her father gave her that cat, and he…_ _well. Please take this_.

She held out four silver. The look on her face told you it’s all she’s got.

 _Keep it,_ you insisted. _No trouble_. 

You kept the clinic open late the next night, and you scraped together enough for another week of meals.

\---

When did you know?

Every time a mother brings her child to you and says _please, no one else will take him._ Every time a mage with gauntlet-shaped bruises comes to you defiant, chin raised. Every refugee with a cough that won’t go away and not enough coin to make it go away so you tell them it’s fine, they can pay you back whenever they’re able, and every time they actually do. Everyone you’ve watched die under your care because even you cannot make miracles, even if you wish you could. Every _thank you_ and _I’m sorry_ and _I don’t know what I would do without you, you’ve saved us, thank you, thank you, thank you_. 

Every time you wish you didn’t need their thanks.

\---

 _I don’t know_ , you tell Hawke. _I don’t know if I deserve to call myself that, really_.

He pushes the hair out of your eyes. Looks into them, with the same gentleness as he does when they burn fire-blue.

 _I don’t know anyone who deserves it more_ , he tells you. 

When he says it like that, you can almost believe him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am multiple places @besselfcn


End file.
